


Out of Luck

by Deejaymil



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), Dying Light (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Christmas Special, First Meetings, Gen, Gift Fic, Rossi cussing like a sailor once more, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 22:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9261164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deejaymil/pseuds/Deejaymil
Summary: Rossi had known it was going to go terribly. The last time the team had taken some kind of holiday together, Agent Greenaway had gotten arrested for murder. Holidays with this lot of federal weirdos meant Reid in shorts with his skinny chicken ankles on show and Hotch in the ghastliest Hawaiian tee that Rossi could find.But that was almost a month ago now. Now, everything had gone to shit.Last holiday: serial killer. This holiday?Fucking zombies.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tafferling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tafferling/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sixty Feet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8925751) by [Tafferling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tafferling/pseuds/Tafferling). 



> Christmas gift for my wonderful friend, Tafferling! Thank you for everything you've done to help me with my writing and just for being an amazing friend over the past year :3 Here's your two favourite men thrown together!
> 
> Cover art was made using official Dying Light artwork and a font created by youtuber ColossalKiwi!
> 
> __

_Take the team on a holiday!_ Cruz had told him. _Let them relax a bit—you’ve all had a hard year!_

Yeah. Holiday, he’d said.

Rossi had _known_ it was going to go terribly. The last time the team had taken some kind of holiday together, Agent Greenaway had gotten arrested for murder. The team didn’t _do_ holidays. Holidays with this lot of federal weirdos meant Reid in shorts with his skinny chicken ankles on show and constantly angling his body to self-consciously hide the scarring on his knee. It meant Prentiss sauntering around in a bikini-and-sarong combo that Rossi wasn’t too old to appreciate, and it meant Hotch following _him_ around glaring because Hotch was actually a clucking old grandma in disguise and he disapproved of Rossi’s appreciation.

Although, Rossi had to admit, Jack and Henry in their little summer outfits were goddamn adorable, and Hotch in the ghastliest Hawaiian tee that Rossi had found in a local store was a sight to cheer him until his dying days.

But that was almost a month ago now. _Now_ , everything had gone to shit.

Last holiday: serial killer.

This holiday?

Fucking zombies.

They were doing fine. They’d dealt with the shock, the fear, the initial panic. As it had turned out, Emily and Reid were a _terrifyingly_ efficient combo when it came to dealing with the zombie fricken apocalypse: with Emily taking them down left, right, and centre, and Reid calmly detailing a survival plan that even Rossi was kind of impressed by. They hadn’t lost _anyone_. They’d fortified, they’d gotten food, and they’d planned to wait for… well, it to end. Really. As Reid had said, if they were _really_ dead, they wouldn’t last long in the putrid heat of Harran.

Turned out, they probably weren’t really dead. Because they weren’t rotting. But the food was.

_We need to get out,_ Hotch had said. They’d all agreed. Their luck, thus far, had been astounding. Surely it would carry them beyond the quarantine and out, even with the boys to protect. Their luck meant they hadn’t lost anyone, yet.

Until now. Rossi pressed back against the wall of a grungy hotel balcony, fire axe in hand, and tried to block out Reid’s shit-fucking whiny voice from his brain as it intoned: _axes are a versatile energy transfer weapon, but their weight is a drawback that may leave you vulnerable if a swing is miscalculated. Always have a light-weight back-up._

Kid knew too much about zombies. Rossi kind of wished he was here right now so he could ask _alright, I’ve gotten myself separated from the team. What are my options now?_

He could figure some answers. Hotch: hunker down, we’ll come to you. Don’t take any risks. Prentiss: don’t die. Kick arse. Some variation of those two things. _You’ve got an axe, Rossi, use it!_ JJ: Don’t go out at night. Stay safe. Hide. The zombies terrified her more than any of them, even Garcia. Oh, Garcia was scared alright. But Garcia also had absolute trust in the people around her. JJ knew only too well that those people were fallible, and her son was relying on that fallibility.

Reid: god only knows.

Peering down from the balcony, he could see the creatures milling below; a sea of groaning, husking, shambling bodies with rolling eyes looking around for a single movement. He wondered if they knew he was here. Suspected they did. And there were twelve—far more than his axe could take.

“Bastards,” he told the zombie things, clicking his teeth together in frustration. “Bastard flavoured bastards wrapped in more bas—”

Movement. Across the rooftop. Rossi crouched, narrowing his eyes. Watched for that movement until that movement became a man working across the red-slate rooftops of central Harran, balancing easily on the guttering with no apparent worry for the seething hordes below. From this distance, his figure was dark against the red light of the setting sun, broad and powerful looking with a crowbar in hand.

Rossi breathed out with an _oomfh,_ recognising that figure. _Morgan_.

Whistling shrilly, he heard the zombies underneath pause their grunting. Morgan turned as well. Rossi waved the axe, the blade catching the sun, seeing Morgan start making his careless way over. Oddly reckless, even now, as though the end of the world had allowed him a kind of confident swagger that the world being _okay_ hadn’t. Rossi sat back, and waited, the ankle he’d turned and probably broken screaming at him for ignoring it until now. Thank fuck. Five hours alone with the dead was enough for anyone with a continued heartbeat.

But it wasn’t Morgan.

Rossi hefted the axe, easing himself so the wall was against his back, and faced the man he’d called over. Pain splintered up his leg, blurring his vision for a moment, and the man’s eyes flickered down to his bare foot cocked up against the floor. Axe vs. crowbar. Rossi liked those odds, if this guy turned out to be a jag-off.

“You whistled?” the man asked, one eyebrow turned up in an expression that made Rossi miss Hotch dearly.

“Yeah, sorry,” Rossi said suspiciously. The past however-fucking-long they’d been stuck in Harran meant they’d seen the kinds of desperate sides of humanity that survival called out, and a man alone was a target. “Thought I saw a dog. I haven’t got a thing here you want.”

The man scowled. A dark look on a face that was probably handsome under the dirt and grime, a look that seemed unsuited to him. Rossi bit back a huff of pain as his foot bumped the rug, and switched his brain back to _profiling_ with an almost audible grating noise. _American. Professional_ , he noted, eyeing the man’s trained stance and sharp gaze. _Out of luck_ , he thought with a grimace, not only because the man was here in Hell too, but mostly because of the crowbar— _imbalanced and lack of grip offsetting a lengthy penetration and versatility for access,_ whined Reid—held carefully in bloodied hands. A professional man should have professional weapons, unless that man was shit outta luck.

“You’re hurt,” the man said, and there was concern under his carefully constructed professionalism. “You bit?”

“Nope,” Rossi grunted. Thank god. They’d all seen what happened to the bitten. Reid and Emily had immediately vanished after they’d realized what being bitten meant, returning with armfuls of heavy clothes that others hadn’t thought to raid yet in their panic. The leather jacket Rossi wore was expensive, soft to the touch but tough as hell. It didn’t make a noise as he moved. Emily had pushed an armoured vest on him, one of only two they’d been able to source from an abandoned security outpost, but Rossi hadn’t taken it.

Shit, he’d just proved he’d made the right choice there. He was old. He was slow. He’d gotten left behind and if he’d had the vest, they’d have lost that too. It was better on her. Looked a damn sight nicer.

The man shifted, his boots heavy on the floor. Something in the hallway outside growled, shuffling. They both looked to the door before moving in perfect unison, pushing it shut and lifting the couch against it, Rossi biting back a rattling moan at his leg. That done, he slumped onto it, squinting out the darkening windows. If the guy was going to kill him, he was going to kill him. Better a marauder than a zombie. They were stuck here for the night now, anyway.

The man bobbed into view, looking down at him. They stared at each other. Whatever was outside thumped away, although he bet not as away as Rossi would hope.

“Want me to look at that?” the man said finally, slinging his crowbar into a strap on his back and leaving his hands empty. Rossi blinked. The man’s posture had shifted, turned open and careful. _Soothing_. Hmm. “Your ankle, I mean. You’re basically a waiting entrée if you can’t walk.”

Reid and Morgan had gotten in a bitter fight the week before, driven by hunger and fear and their violently oppositional views on this new world. _We don’t approach strangers,_ Morgan had snarled, furious with Reid for almost getting snacked on after detouring away to follow a cry for help that had turned out to be a raider’s trap. _You don’t fucking do it, Reid! It’s too risky!_

Reid had folded his arms, mulish. _Helping behaviour is a result of naturally selected predispositions that are activated and influenced by cognitive and social processes_ , he’d replied pertly. _Humans are evolved to **help**._

_Helping will get you killed._ Rossi could almost hear how cold and angry Morgan had sounded, the rest of the team awkwardly ranged around them. No one really wanting to take sides, and Hotch trying to keep the peace. He remembered the hiss of shock that had rippled around the room at Morgan’s sharp, _helping will get **them** killed _ and his cutting look to the boys asleep on the couch, tangled together like puppies. JJ had started crying. Garcia, too. Reid hadn’t said another word, even as Prentiss and Hotch had scolded the other man for his callousness. Rossi had privately thought Morgan had a point.

But maybe Reid had been right all along.

“David,” he said, voice almost too loud. They winced, glancing at the door, and he lowered the volume. “I’m David Rossi. FBI.”

“What’s a fed doing in Harran?” the man said with a snort. Rossi just cocked an eyebrow back. “Crane. Kyle Crane. I’m… freelance.”

_Mercenary,_ Rossi added to his mental checklist. _Not to be trusted._ “We go our own ways in the morning,” he said finally, “but I’d appreciate a hand, if you’ve got one to offer.”

“Got two,” grunted Crane. “Just don’t bite them.” He held one out, dirt under the nails and the palms calloused thickly. Rossi considered his options, before taking the offered hand. Even if they were both shit outta luck, since when had Rossi ever relied on luck to get him through?

_See you soon,_ he thought grimly to his team, and let the stranger support him. _I’m on my way._

**Author's Note:**

> **Edited August, 2017.**


End file.
